


Better Than Living Dangerously With a Six-Armed Bandit

by Megan



Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger
Genre: Aliens, Canon-Typical Comedic Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, First Meetings, Humor, Implied Injury Kink, Implied Xenobiology, M/M, Non-Sexual Xeno, Pre-Canon, Sexual Tension, Sharing Clothes, Trust Issues, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8883406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megan/pseuds/Megan
Summary: Marvelous isn't an idiot, no matter what the Zangyack propaganda says about him. Since it also says that he has terrible hair, steals anything that isn't nailed down, and that he's fucking Basco ta Jolokia, all of which are demonstrably untrue, none of it should be trusted by anyone.The one about stealing is the biggest lie on the list. Marvelous steals plenty of things that are nailed down, thank you very much. His bounty really should be higher in light of that.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laylah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/gifts).



> Also contains: baseless speculation about both Joe's and Marvelous' home planets that may conflict with canon outside the TV series (if there is any), extrapolating character quirks into freaky alien biologies in ways Toei never intended, incredible amounts of salt re: Basco, and Marvelous' crass internal narration (his thirst is very real).

Marvelous isn't an idiot, no matter what the Zangyack propaganda says about him. Since it also says that he has terrible hair, steals anything that isn't nailed down, and that he's fucking Basco ta Jolokia-- all of which are demonstrably untrue-- none of it should be trusted by anyone.

The one about stealing is the biggest lie on the list. Marvelous steals plenty of things that are nailed down, thank you very much. His bounty really should be higher in light of that.

He's not an idiot. He knows that he'll need a real crew to get anything done. If one man and a dubiously helpful robot bird could steal the greatest treasure in the universe, it would have vanished the instant some enterprising scientist figured out how to make a dubiously helpful robot bird. No, he needs exactly the right kind of crew to help him with this. Marvelous needs people who aren't afraid to fight Zangyack, who have a loose moral code in regards to the ownership of personal property, people who know how to cook.

Especially that last one. The takeout boxes are starting to take over what little of the kitchen Marvelous hadn't trashed in a rage after the clusterfuck with Basco.

He starts with the bounty boards, since that seems the easiest way to go about finding competent people who hate Zangyack and like ill-gotten money.

After the fourth person who's already been captured and executed by Zangyack by the time Marvelous finds them and the third who laughs in his face and tells him to run along before they turn him in for the bounty-- and one flattering proposition from a ruggedly handsome privateer with six arms that he briefly considers accepting until he remembers said pirate's reputation for robbing his one-night stands blind-- he realizes that it isn't. Turns out that Marvelous is something of an anomaly; most low-value bounties aren't competent enough to stay alive. Maybe he should give himself even more credit for being special than he already does.

Criminals who live long enough to rack up a high-dollar bounty are the ones who laugh at him. They've got their own enterprises and plans and don't need his help. And if they do want anything from him, it's probably his ship. He's somewhere on a sliding scale from optional bonus to completely unnecessary.

So he has no choice but to turn to the least helpful thing on his ship, which is flying around in circles in lieu of doing anything remotely helpful.

"The Zangyack speak of who you seek," Navi suggests after hitting its head on the ceiling a few too many times. It doesn't usually rhyme; this is an annoying new development. It's probably doing it on purpose. Great, even his concussed robot bird is mocking him. But he listens anyway, if only because AkaRed would have. And because if he doesn't, it will never shut up. 

That brings him to step one of this literally bird-brained plan: start spying on the closest Zangyack forces to see who they're talking about.

The local military communication channel has shit for encryption-- hello, overconfidence of a late-stage empire-- and gives him a backwater planet where two low-level special forces-turned-defectors have broken out of prison. This might work; Zangyack special forces are nothing to fuck with, not even the ones who can't hack it, and just having one of their names on the crew roster might soften future recruits.

Sid Bamick and Joe Gibken both look pretty good laid out on screen. Gibken's up for dereliction of duty and insubordination on his very first mission to a new planet, which Marvelous knows full well is code for not having the stomach to kill civilians. Bamick's got the same, but after they'd gone back to the outpost and with the added charge of security tampering. That has to be a prison break, maybe trying to bust out Gibken.

 _Bingo._ Bamick's the one he wants. Anyone who risks a Zangyack court-martial and execution to save a comrade is literally the opposite of the feather-wearing shitlord who will no longer be named. And whose stupid expressions like _bingo!_ Marvelous really needs to stop thinking in.

It's a hard habit to break. He keeps half expecting that jackass to show up with one last dinner before swanning back off into space. Not that it would save him from Marvelous' wrath, because it wouldn't.

He would still eat that dinner, though. _Priorities_.

"What do you think?" He asks Navi, for lack of anyone better to bounce the idea off of. Worst case scenario, it just makes fun of him again.

Navi flies up into the air and starts spinning again in response, which is the absolute last thing he expects. It's not usually this helpful at the appropriate time when AkaRed isn't the one asking.

Considering that it's the whole reason he's here in the first place, this is more than a little worrying.

"The master is lost to you. The student is the one you seek," Navi says, which makes not a goddamn bit of sense. Back to business as usual, then.

"Ugh, why am I asking a bird?" He leans back in his seat, which he knows is a mistake a second after he does it. Unfortunately for him, that second is enough time for Navi to dive bomb his face.

"Don't call me that! I have a name!"

It's lucky that he's not better with computers. If he were, he'd rig it up to explode and send it COD to a certain nameless, backstabbing, feather-bedecked garbage pile.

The planet where Zangyack is conquering and pillaging today turns out to be a rocky shithole because of course that's what it is. Gotta keep the nice ones for the Emperor's vacation homes, or whatever it is they do with balmy, water-covered planets that surrender before they explode. Marvelous hasn't the faintest idea, considering that none of the languages on his planet had ever come up with a word for _surrender_.

No, really. They hadn't. It had been a real problem translating all those news broadcasts about Zangyack demands.

He picks up more radio chatter once he's in planetary broadcast range, and the more he hears of it the more confidence he has in this plan. Sid Bamick is getting talked up as a stone-cold badass who's taking down elite officers like they're gray-suited foot soldiers. People are screaming. People who don't have the biology to scream are making weird gurgling noises with their cephalopod vocal apparatuses. Bird squawking is definitely happening. It's fucking chaos.

Except then it isn't.

 _We've got him_ , one of them says over the radio. At least, that's what Marvelous thinks he says. He's never been the greatest at translating languages that involve whistling. Then they repeat it in Standard Zangyack and he's proven right. Bamick is down, back in military custody. The hunt is on for Gibken, who's leading them on one hell of a chase.

Fuck, of course the one he can still get is a runner. Marvelous hates runners. They go against everything he stands for, for values of 'everything' that include 'standing there and taking hits from unsuspecting mooks because they don't realize what planet you survived.' Retreat has a time and a place, but some people just run from everything.

Backstabber ta Jackoff (look, the substitute name is a work in progress that will get better when Marvelous has time to think of something) had been a runner. Forget this guy and his running, forget Navi's stupid, cryptic directions. What he came for isn't here anymore, unless he thinks he can break into a Zangyack military installation single-handedly for someone who might already be dead.

A _stranger_ who might already be dead, at that. If he were already part of the crew it would be different, but he's not.

On the way back to the ship, he hears the patrol shouting about a traitor. Said traitor has two swords and is mowing through troops like the radio screams had said Bamick was, and it's even better in person than it had sounded secondhand. Marvelous has no idea what's up with him-- Joe Gibken? An escaped Sid Bamick? Some other traitor to the empire who decided to take the opportunity and run?-- but he's good. Really good.

Until the explosion takes him down, anyway.

If fate and his bird's shitty directions have given him an opportunity, well, who is Marvelous to turn it down? He raises his pistol and takes a shot.

"Is this how the Zangyack party?" He grins, partly because he's itching for a fight now and partly because up close, he can see that the defector is ridiculously hot. Nobody's ever mentioned the words 'regulation haircut' to this one.

"I know who you are," isn't what Marvelous expects to hear in response, but obviously he'll take the fame. Infamy. Whatever. "The space pirate. If you're looking for money, I don't have any."

Oh, hell. This opportunity is too good. He has to say it. He will never forgive himself if he doesn't use this line right now.

"Wasn't looking for it," he says. Then he props his sword up on his shoulder, which he knows for a fact looks both really badass and really hot. "You're the one I came here for."

Then they're standing back to back, weapons ready, and it's the best fight Marvelous has had in years.

*

 _Ow_. Taking the brunt of that attempted electrocution had, in hindsight, maybe not been his best idea ever.

"You have anything to eat on you?" is admittedly not the best line to use on the ex-Zangyack defector he's just invited to join his crew, but it's all he's got right now. Nobody should be expected to come up with witty and charming conversation with at least two broken ribs and hands that are still twitching from that electric shock.

Besides, he's already won the pick-up line game. _You're the one I came here for_ had actually _worked_.

"What?" Joe Gibken manages to roll over onto his hands and knees. His face is a mess and his hair is everywhere. He looks fantastic.

Marvelous isn't often happy to be proven wrong, but he's thrilled to be wrong about Joe Gibken turning tail and running from danger.

"Food. Do you have any?" Marvelous doesn't even attempt to stand up. He deserves a nap, even if the ground here is a shitty place for it. "If you want me getting up from that electrocution I just took for you, I need some."

Joe staggers up into a kneeling position and pulls something out of his pocket, then tosses it right onto Marvelous' chest. That's some impressive aim, considering he took some of that shock.

He manages to pick it up and peel off the wrapper-- a military ration bar, ugh, but he should have expected that. It tastes like sawdust and tyranny, but it does what it's meant to: shove enough calories and nutrients into him to keep him alive and let him walk back to the ship.

The walk back takes longer than it should; whatever planet Joe hails from originally, it's pretty clear that he can't just walk off injuries. He's not a native Zangyack-- not enough feathers or fascism-- but other than that he could be from about a thousand different worlds. And that's just counting the ones that weren't destroyed before Marvelous ever heard of them.

"Not bad." Joe's initial assessment could be more enthusiastic. Marvelous had worked hard on ripping up those sweaters and strewing them around the entryway for later jettisoning into space. "Why does it smell like demolitions day in Zangyack basic training?"

That takes Marvelous a minute to get-- burned feathers, Zangyack special forces training, demolitions accidents, _pfffthahaha_ \-- but when he does, he feels even better about his life and choices.

"Can you cook?" Marvelous asks when they get to what remains of the kitchen after his post-betrayal rampage. The post-betrayal rampage is a very important part of the healing process. At least, that's what he'd told Navi when it wouldn't stop yelling at him for trashing important parts of the ship.

"No." Joe steps over a battered, dented pan. "But I can bake."

"Those are literally the same thing." If Marvelous had known the first crew member he managed to pick up would be able to make some kind of food, he might have been a little easier on the kitchen. Maybe.

"No, they aren't." Now he's leaning over to pick up the pan, and Marvelous is leaning over to watch. Supervising the new crew member is very important. Especially when he's bending over. "I can't make you dinner, or anything. Just some desserts."

Marvelous manages to haul himself up to sit on the counter, which is kind of hell on his bruised abdominal muscles but totally worth it for how good he looks.

"Bake me a cake, Joe Gibken," he says, because what else is he supposed to do with an extremely attractive special forces operative who can, evidently, make desserts?

"You punched a hole in the oven." Joe manages to sound both confused and disgusted by this, which Marvelous counts as a win. "Why did you punch a hole in the oven?"

"The last guy who cooked for me sold me out to Zangyack, so I trashed the kitchen and burned all of his feather boas."

"Oh." Joe pauses for a moment, as if he needs time to parse the statement.

Then he throws the pan at the wall hard enough to send a clang reverberating up and down the galley.

Marvelous can't stop smiling, even though he's probably not getting a cake today. This is better. He is keeping Joe _forever_.

Once they make it through the galley and up to the living quarters, a much more appealing problem than a hole in the oven presents itself: fleeing Zangyack with nothing but his swords and a couple of ration bars means that Joe has nothing to replace his all but ruined uniform with.

"We're about the same size, so find something that isn't burned to shit." He waves expansively at his dresser and closet.

The pants wind up fitting all right-- maybe a little tight in the thighs, but where is the problem?-- but Marvelous has underestimated how much of that shoulder bulk is Zangyack armor and how much is whatever god Joe believes in has blessed him with. Marvelous' shirt hangs all wrong (which is to say so, so right) and the blue jacket he's honestly forgotten about is just a little shorter than its designer probably intended.

That just shows how little the designer knows. If they had realized who would be wearing it, the unobstructed view would have been their intent in the first place.

Joe knows that he's staring; he meets every smug, challenging look with that same smirking twist of his lips he'd made during the fight.

Marvelous leans in a little, but before either of them can do or say anything his stomach interrupt. It growls loudly enough to remind him that oh yeah, he's in healing mode and needs to eat a hell of a lot more protein than they currently have on the ship.

He doesn't even think of the potential blowjob innuendo there until a few seconds later, which is a bad sign.

"Oy, bird! Get us to a non-Zangyack planet with restaurants before I starve to death!" There's a faint, unintelligible reply that he doesn't have to understand to know is affront at being called a bird. "Come on, you can see how the ship handles and meet your other crewmate."

Before he follows Joe back down, Marvelous opens the chest full of ranger keys. If they're going to work together, Marvelous needs to trust him enough to give him one of these. But it's one thing to look at Joe on a battlefield, knowing him for all of five minutes, and thinking that it feels like destiny. It's another entirely to have him on the ship, walking where AkaRed and that backstabbing bastard had been before him.

Two months ago, Marvelous wouldn't have believed someone who told him that AkaRed would be dead and he wouldn't even be able to think about that bastard's name without wanting to light something on fire.

But he doesn't want to believe that his gut feeling is that wrong twice in a row, so he looks through the ranger keys. Blue feels right. It matches the jacket Marvelous doesn't plan on taking back. Blue is a good color for Joe.

He slips it into his coat pocket and decides, for once in his life, to wait and see.

*

They don't even have time for Marvelous-- who requires nothing more than a huge supply of cheap protein and a night or two of sleep to get back into fighting form after a beating and near-electrocution-- to recover, much less Joe, before the first Zangyack patrol finds them. Navi is very, very fired if this is its best effort at getting them to a non-Zangyack planet for takeout.

At least they have time to eat their admittedly good food before the first group boards the ship. Maybe he'll just lock Navi in the brig for awhile.

This system is a total backwater, albeit one with amazing hot wings and even better noodles, and the caliber of imperial patrol here reflects that. It's all low-level troops and repurposed desk personnel except for the crustacean leading them. That officer might be trouble, enough trouble that Marvelous wonders what they did to get stationed all the way out here with bureaucrats and conscripts.

"He's good," Joe says before the lobster-clawed enforcer of tyranny makes a single move on them. His swords are already drawn.

Marvelous is closer to the door than Joe, but not for long. When he moves in to strike, one clawed arm sends him flying right into the table and the few dishes that survived the kitchen purge.

They don't survive the second, equally violent purge that is Marvelous' ribcage smashing into them and crushing them under his weight. Neither does the table.

Joe's swords crumple like foil in the officer's clawed grip and fall to the floor bent almost double. Marvelous is trying to line up a shot from under all the broken dishes and table splinters-- he's going to be picking ceramic and wood out of his skin for days if they survive this-- when Joe kicks at something on the floor.

It's the pan from earlier, the one he'd thrown at the wall.

Marvelous can't even lament the loss of his angle in the split second the pan flies into the air. As soon as it's level with his arm, Joe grabs it and slams it into the officer's face. He further capitalizes on the opportunity by slipping past the sorry excuse for a Zangyack while he's distracted.

He's seen enough that he doesn't hesitate this time. He takes the spare mobile and the blue ranger key out of his coat pocket and presses them into Joe's palm as soon as he's close enough.

"The extra weapons aren't on this deck, but you can use mine." He takes the sword off his hip and shoves that at Joe, too. Marvelous would rather fight with a pistol anyway. "Come on, let's give him the show he came here for."

He'd been right. Blue is definitely Joe's color.

The fight's over almost embarrassingly quickly after that. Joe's old Zangyack-issue swords might not be strong enough for this fight, but the Gokai saber doesn't have that kind of dysfunction.

He is absolutely allowed to keep thinking in bad double entendres. For one, it's his ship and his head. For another, Joe is beaten-up and sweaty again, but this time he's doing it while wearing Marvelous' clothes. These lines are writing themselves, really.

Marvelous doesn't know which one of them makes the first move, but the next thing he knows they're up against the metal galley wall. Marvelous grasps Joe's ponytail hard enough to jerk his head back and bare his throat; Joe has a punishing hand on Marvelous' hip that has to be leaving bruises.

"Good fight," he almost-laughs.

Joe slams his back up against the wall. Marvelous stops laughing.

He lets go of Joe's hair to better hang on to his (magnificent, Joe can wear Marvelous' too-tight shirts forever so far as he's concerned) shoulders. If this is how Joe wants it, then Marvelous should have climbed him like the mast the instant they were back on the ship. This is even better than living dangerously with that six-armed bandit who wanted to rob him blind.

"Marvelous," Joe all but purrs. Oh, fuck, this is another perfect opportunity to use a line he's been saving.

"I told you back there, what I wanted was _you_ ," he says.

Joe leans in close, breath hot and damp in his ear. Marvelous tightens his grip on Joe's shoulders.

"You have glass stuck in your face," he murmurs, and backs out of Marvelous' grip. "You should pick it out before the skin heals over it."

"Ugh, I changed my mind. You're fired." Marvelous lets his head fall back against the wall in defeat. He can feel the engines rumbling as Navi gets them out of there. "Give me back the ranger key and your jacket."

Joe does neither one, but he does help Marvelous pick all of the glass out of his face before it scabs up. 

It's a start, and it's not like he doesn't have plenty of time to accomplish the whole climbing Joe like the mast thing.

**Author's Note:**

> The dialogue in Marvelous and Joe's initial meeting is paraphrased from episode 12 (for the most part-- the line "is this how the Zangyack party?" was lifted unaltered from the TV Nihon subtitles).


End file.
